


Cure Wounds

by agrotera



Series: Verbal, Somatic, Material [1]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, M/M, wound care
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-19
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2020-01-16 08:10:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,280
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18517417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agrotera/pseuds/agrotera
Summary: After their encounter with the manticore, Caleb considers the mortality of his dearest friend, and Fjord mends his wounds—the ones he can see, anyway.





	Cure Wounds

**Author's Note:**

> This is a re-post of a fic I deleted some months ago. I was worried someone in my real life had found my work. I'm still worried! But maybe I also don't care anymore. In any case, I'm sorry for doing that, and I'm sorry if you missed this fic!

Even for a village in mourning, Alfield was quiet. They trudged through the streets, burned-out husks of shops and residences flanking them on either side, each of them desperate for a different thing: sleep, a drink, a warm fire, quiet.

Nott had got the worst of it—she could barely keep her feet. Every few steps she stumbled, and Caleb caught her by her arm, her shoulder, her waist. Just a few feet from the door to the Mead and Feed, he scooped her up into his arms. Once inside, he made straight for the stairs. He paused only to unlock the door to their room, his right hand trembling and left holding Nott tight against his chest. He got the door opened at last and shouldered inside.

Caleb laid Nott on the bed nearest the door. She may as well be dead for how deeply she already slept—limbs slack and boneless, breaths coming shallow and slow. Her skin, usually the green of creeping ivy where it wasn’t smudged with dirt, had taken on the dusty, pale green of olive leaves, and her eyes were glassy and dim where he could see them through her drooping eyelids. He began to smooth the wrinkles in her brow and stopped himself halfway through the motion. He pulled his hand away, and even in the low light he could see the red that streaked across his fingers.

A little bird of panic fluttered in his chest. Jester had healed her, hadn’t she? He’d watched her do it. Long-fingered hands, tiefling-blue, spread across Nott’s chest. And red, seeping between. Jester’s eyes so wide he expected to see white. Her teeth, worrying her bottom lip. Chanting, praying—no doubt to her Traveler. Nott wasn’t waking up. Why wasn’t she waking up? And then Jester drew her hands away and Nott was gasping, yellow eyes bright with fear.

Fjord found Caleb kneeling beside the bed.

Caleb held a soiled handkerchief in one hand and the corner of his filthy shirtsleeve in the other, unable to decide which what the least dirty so he might clean the blood from Nott’s face. His expression was unreadable, his eyes far away—as distant and sightless as they had been in the mine.

It was an expression Fjord half-knew, remembered from the times Caleb saw through Frumpkin’s eyes, but different. Worse. Empty.

“Let her rest.” Fjord spoke softly, fearful of frightening Caleb, but the man jumped anyway. “Sorry, sorry, I didn’t mean to spook you,” Fjord said, and winced. He drew away the hand he’d been about to rest on Caleb’s shoulder and took a small step back.

“I didn’t hear you come in.” Caleb took care to enunciate every syllable, but he didn’t look at Fjord, only continued to clutch at the handkerchief and the shirt and stare at Nott’s sleeping face. Some of the bandages on her ears had unraveled. The ones on her left ear were marred with a splatter of red.

Fjord took another step back, closer to the door. The floorboards creaked. “Everyone’s downstairs if you—“

Caleb turn jerkily toward him. Tears—now dried—had carved tracks down his dirty face.

“You know what, no.” Lips pursed, Fjord took the last few steps to the door in one stride and gently closed it. “You’re not drinking tonight.” He sat on the edge of the bed—perched, really—near Nott’s feet.

Caleb jerked his gaze Fjord back to Nott. The tips of his ears burned. He didn’t need Fjord there, hadn’t asked him to check up on him, certainly didn’t want to _talk._ He could take care of Nott on his own; he’d been doing it for weeks. But the man couldn’t take a hint.

“You got that weird look again. Kind of bug-eyed, but dead. Like someone killed your dog, but they did it a week back and you still haven’t quite come to terms.” Fjord rested his chin in his hand, elbows on his knees, and watched him.

“Pardon?” Caleb inflected the word down. Not a question, but a statement, flat and affectless. _Go away,_ it said. _Leave me alone._

“She’s all right, Caleb. Jester healed her. You saw her do it.”

“But she’s bleeding—?”

“She’s not. That’s old blood. Look, it’s already turnin’ brown.” Fjord leaned forward and pinched the hem of Nott’s ragged coat between his thumb and forefinger. They came away red, but inconsistently so, just a little patchy, and the blood on the pads of his callused fingers was thick, congealing. “See? That ain’t fresh.”

Caleb mimicked Fjord’s motion, pinching at Nott’s coat and inspecting the small bit of blood that clung there. It looked brighter on the pale skin of his hands than it did on Fjord’s green ones, but still, it was evident Fjord was right. That was not fresh blood. Caleb wiped his fingers on his breeches and took a deep, shuddering breath.

Fjord leaned close, his voice low and considerate of Nott’s rest. “She sees you worryin’ like that, it’s gonna scare her,” he said.

Caleb dipped his chin to his chest. Fjord thought at first that he was hiding his face, but Caleb slowly nodded instead, though he didn’t meet Fjord’s eyes. He wiped the back of his hand under his nose and then wiped that on his breeches, too. Though Fjord had shown him Nott was fine, Caleb still couldn’t quite trust the evidence of his eyes. Something in his chest was knotted tight.

“What happened in the mine?” Fjord asked as delicately as he could, but the words still came out sounding more like an accusation than he’d intended.

“No.” Caleb snapped. He looked at Fjord, eyes hard, and silently dared him to ask again.

Fjord let his hand fall into his lap and sat up a bit straighter. “I just meant— listen, if you wanna talk about it— whatever that was, you know. You can.”

Caleb looked away.

Fjord quickly corrected himself. “Doesn’t have to be to me,” he continued, smashing the words together in his rush to get them out in the right order. “Molly might act like he’s above it all, but he’s a bad liar, whatever he thinks, and I can tell he cares. I’m sure you could talk to him, too.”

Caleb seemed to be chewing on his words, and half-opened his mouth to speak only to close it again with a snap.

“Or… not,” Fjord said. “You can just keep whatever’s goin’ on all bottled up until it explodes and gets one of us killed. Not my _favorite_ option, mind, but—“

“Shush.”

Fjord stopped, taken aback by Caleb casual admonition.

“You’re worse than Jester when you’re uncomfortable,” Caleb said.

Fjord limited his reply to a snort. The way Caleb sat hunched on the edge of their room’s one rickety chair, neck muscles taut and narrow shoulders drawn up around his ears—he was coiled so tight, he looked about to fly apart. A wrong word from Fjord met send Caleb to pieces.

“She should not have done that,” Caleb said after a moment had passed. “With the manticore’s infant. Nott should not have killed it.”

Fjord cleared his throat. Finally, they were entering comfortable territory. “I didn’t want to say anything, but it did seem a bit cruel—“

“It was foolish. The way it went after her, it—it nearly ripped her in two,” Caleb said, voice cracking, and shook his head as much to hide the splotchy redness that spread across his face in a wave of heat as to have an excuse to look away from Fjord.

Caleb’s unkempt hair—normally a light brown—was matted and dark with sweat and dirt from their time in the mine. One spot in particular was darker than the rest, and even looked a bit wet.

“Hang on, is your head bleeding?” Fjord asked.

“What?” Caleb gingerly patted along the side and crown of his head. When he took his hand away, it was slick with blood. “Oh.” He showed his filthy, bloody palm to Fjord. “Yes, it is.”

“Gods below,” Fjord stoop abruptly and went to the door. He’d nearly closed it behind him when he popped his head back around the jam. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said. “I’m gonna get Jester.”

Caleb drew his brows together. “Don’t. She’s tired. She should not cast anymore spells without rest.” He looked pointedly at Nott and frowned.

Fjord thought about what Caleb said, then nodded. “Yeah, all right. Old-fashioned way, then.” He closed the door. The sound of his heavy footfalls receded down the stairs.

The candle the innkeep kindly lit before their return began to gutter, throwing dancing shadows across the wall. It went out abruptly and left a curl of smoke where its flame had been.

Caleb was content to sit in the dark. A tad melodramatic, to be sure, but the silent room felt safer for the lack of light—smaller, closer. More easily controlled. Nott stirred, turning onto her side. Caleb took her much smaller hand in his without thinking, then froze, afraid his touch might wake her. But she slept on, fingers briefly flexing around his own, and rolled over again on her back. Her light grip slackened, and her hand fell away. Still, Caleb left it there. Just in case she rolled back, or woke up. Just so she’d know someone was there.

Time passed slowly. Fjord couldn’t have been gone more than five minutes, but if anyone had been there to question Caleb then, he would have sworn at least an hour had spun by while he watched Nott sleep. Somewhere in that time, he managed to shrug off his overcoat and remove his scarf, but he had no memory of having done so.

As it was, Fjord returned shortly, but he didn’t stay. Seeing the candle was out, he left again, muttering curses under his breath. When next he returned, he carried a fistful of tapered candles, two clay jars, a stoppered bottle, and a freshly laundered length of linen.

He lit the taper and handed it to Caleb without a word. With light enough now to see, he set what he’d been carrying onto the small side table and brought it over to the bed as quietly as he was able, which was quieter than Caleb would have guessed, given Fjord’s size.

“What’s all this?” Caleb asked, gesturing at the bottle and jar.

Fjord took the candle from Caleb and put it in its holder, then set it on the table with everything else. “The stuff I’m gonna use to fix your head.” He sat again on the edge of the bed facing Caleb, careful still not to jostle Nott. He picked up the linen and unstoppered the bottle. The unmistakable smell of vinegar filled the space between them.

“Did we lose Beau’s healing kit?” Caleb asked, more to fill the silence than because he wanted to know. He looked around for Beau’s pack in a half-hearted show of interest.

Fjord snorted. “That’s for field dressing. Besides, there’s no need to use it when we can get the same for free from the innkeep downstairs.” He paused a beat. “Well, mostly free.”

“I’ll pay you back,” Caleb said, his voice soft. “We did get paid, didn’t we?”

“Tomorrow, and you’re not payin’ me back. It was a handful of copper at most, and nothing between friends.”

Caleb’s gaze wandered to his hand on the bed, still filthy, still lingering just within Nott’s reach. Her chest rose and fell in even speed. “I don’t like to owe people things,” he said. “I’ll pay you back.”

“Have it your way,” Fjord shrugged. He no intention of taking Caleb’s coin, but he didn’t need to tell Caleb that. He poured a generous portion of the vinegar onto the linen. As he did, he observed Caleb from the corner of his eye.

Caleb was never in great shape, but without the bulk of coat to hide him—where had that gone, anyway?—it was clear the man was frightfully thin. Someone who could shoot fire out of his hands didn’t need to be _strong_ , certainly, but the stretched-skin boniness of Caleb’s arms spoke not of a man who was just more likely to lift books than weights, but who rarely ever ate a full meal.

Just looking at Caleb was enough to make Fjord’s chest ache. He’d been through his own share of hard times—he’d known what it was to be hungry. Fjord didn’t want to call attention to Caleb’s health and put the man in an awkward position. All the same, now that he knew, he wasn’t about to let it go. But that was a problem for another day.

Fjord cleared his throat. “You ever have stitches in your head?”

“No,” Caleb said, but his gaze was still trained on Nott. He wasn’t listening.

“They’ll make you see through time,” Fjord said.

That got his attention. Caleb’s head snapped up. “I’m sorry… what?”

Fjord had a ready retort on his tongue, but Caleb’s sudden attention had caught him off guard. Gods, but his eyes were blue.

“They, uh, hurt like a bitch,” Fjord said after he’d gathered his wits.

Caleb blinked. “Ah.”

“So, I’m not gonna do them.” Now Fjord was hoping Caleb would look _away_. But no, it seemed Fjord had his full attention. Damn.

“That’s… good,” Caleb said. He knit his brows, briefly confused. Fjord was usually calm—sometimes deceptively so—but just then he was failing to keep up appearances.

Fjord avoided making eye with him, fidgeting instead with the jar on the small table.

“But I still gotta clean the wound,” Fjord said.

“…Ah.” There were Fjord’s nerves explained, then.

Fjord grimaced. “And that’s gonna feel bad.”

“Yes, I inferred as much.”

“All right, just wanted to make sure,” Fjord said. He bent forward and gave Caleb a pained smile that he hoped read as genuine.

 “Don’t wanting you shooting fire at me later because I tried to fix you up under false pretenses or something.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

“Lean forward for me,” Fjord said. Caleb did, but it wasn’t far enough, so Fjord grabbed the edge of the Caleb’s chair and pulled it closer.

“Oh!”

“Need to actually see what I’m doing here,” Fjord muttered. He peered at the mess of Caleb’s blood-matted hair. He’d have to deal with that before he could even look at the cut.

When Caleb didn’t immediately respond, Fjord hazarded a glance down. Caleb had stiffened. One hand clutched the seat of the chair in a white-knuckled grip, and the other was dug into the fabric of Nott’s coat.

Fjord fucked up.

“I shouldn’t’ve moved you without asking,” Fjord said. “I won’t do it again.” He tried to meet Caleb’s eyes to let him know that he meant it, but every time Caleb’s nervous gaze flicked toward his, it seemed to slide right off his face and end up somewhere behind Fjord’s shoulder.

Well, served him right. Caleb obviously had some kind of thing with control, and Fjord hadn’t taken it seriously. Fjord would try, though, now that he knew for sure.

Caleb shifted across from him. When Fjord looked at him next, Caleb’s one hand was back in his lap and the other resting just beside Nott, like they hadn’t moved at all.

“Can I take a look?” Fjord asked, gesturing with the now vinegar-soaked linen.

“You may.”

Fjord reached tentatively for the mat of Caleb’s hair and teased several large pieces apart. He tried to be gentle, but even so, Caleb winced.

And, sure enough, there as the gash. It ran from just behind the edge of Caleb’s hairline back about two inches. It was curved, but cut clean, no ragged pieces to worry about. A small mercy, that. And while the cut wasn’t too terribly long, it looked, at least at first glance, rather deeper than Fjord would have liked. It was a lucky thing Caleb had that mess of hair—the drying blood had held the hair together, doing a fair job of binding the wound closed. It was also a shame—because now he had to open it again.

Fjord told Caleb all this as he riffled about in his pack, looking for his canteen. He shook it. Still had some water in there. Good. Fjord took his seat at the edge of the bed again and pulled the candle closer.

“Gonna need to get some of the blood out of your hair.”

“Fine.”

“Gonna need you to scoot closer to me, too”

“Yes, all right.” Caleb did. Their knees bumped awkwardly together as he situated himself.

“Bend your head down a bit.”

Caleb did that, too.

And Fjord got to work. He dribbled water on the matted part of Caleb’s hair and worked the tangle free. Once he finally had a good view of the cut, he took up the vinegar-wet rag again and began to clean the area around the wound. With every gentle daub and wipe, Caleb stiffened.

With the congealed blood cleaned away, the wound began to bleed again. Blood wept at the edges of the cut, coming a bit faster with Caleb’s accelerating heartbeat. And Fjord still needed to flush the wound.

“Caleb?”

“What.” Caleb ground the word out through gritted teeth.

“I’m gonna need you to calm down a hair. The faster your heart beats, the more you bleed, and the more you bleed, the harder this is to clean.”

“I’m sorry. I’m trying.”

“I know.” And Fjord did know, weird though it was to think about. The outside of Fjord’s thigh was braced hard against the inside of Caleb’s knee. Fjord could feel the man’s pounding pulse even through the thick of his breeches.

“You wanna talk?” Fjord asked. “Not about—“

“No,” Caleb said. He took a shallow breath and steadied himself. “I mean, yes, but not about the mine. Yes, I do want to talk. Please.”

“All right.” Fjord let a long moment a silence pass between them as he thought of something helpful to say. Caleb’s leg began to shake. Helpful—maybe helpful wasn’t the right approach. And Caleb was distrustful of honesty because he was smart. Honesty—that’d catch him off guard. Good.

“You know, I nearly died a couple weeks back.”

Caleb started. Fjord flushed the wound with vinegar. A muffled whimper escaped from between Caleb’s tightly pursed lips.

“It’s true,” Fjord continued. “It was just me and Jester then. We’d only just met, really. Weirdest girl I’d ever shared words with. Wasn’t sure I trusted her.”

As Fjord spoke, he poured vinegar in the wound, then dabbed it away. Pour, dab, pour, dab—until pink vinegar started dribbling onto the floor between them. He’d have preferred a high proof liquor, as those cleaned better, but they were rare outside the big cities, and Alfield wasn’t the type of place to go to the trouble of importing them when beer and local herbal aperitifs would serve them just as well.

“I did something stupid. We were holed up in the solitary, shithole inn of a lonely, shithole town on the coast, waitin’ out some bad weather. I came in from a walk to clear my head and found a handful of local toughs ‘round the fireplace giving Jester a hard time.”

“Gallant idiot.” Caleb snorted, then caught his breath with a moan as Fjord pulled the edges of the wound apart to better irrigate it.

“Yeah, you know where this is goin’.” Fjord laughed low and under his breath, careful to keep his tone light. Poor guy wasn’t taking Fjord’s care too well. Wouldn’t help to depress the shit out of him, too. “I wade in there, bust some heads, chase ‘em off thinking I’m some kind of big man. Jester was furious.”

“She was robbing them,” Caleb said between breaths.

“Bingo.”

“Nott tried to run that scam with me once, but it didn’t work.”

“I mean… even if you can’t tell she’s a goblin, she looks like a kid.”

“No, with _me_. I was the honeypot.” Caleb stifled a strained laugh, which made Fjord smile. Better that than a whimper.

“No shit? Did you, you know, bathe? Beforehand?”

“As I told you, it didn’t work.”

“Right. That makes sense.” Caleb _did_ smell, there was no denying it. Sweat, body odor, unwashed hair—and, right at that moment, pickles—but this close to him… there was some ineffable “Caleb-ness” beneath the stink that Fjord didn’t much mind.

It didn’t smell like any one thing, really, and Fjord couldn’t have described it to someone if they’d asked. But there was a warmth to it, perhaps not so much a smell as a feeling. Maybe it was a human thing? Whatever it was, it was comfortable, and it made a small current of heat snap beneath his skin.

“You were saying?” Caleb prompted, his breaths heavy again.

“Oh, yeah.” The bleeding had slowed. That was good. And he couldn’t see any grit or dirt in the wound. That was better. Using a dry corner of the linen, Fjord absorbed some of the remaining moisture from the cut and picked up the small jar. It was an earthenware container simply varnished and painted with a band of small black lines.

While none of this was fun for Caleb, what Fjord needed to do next would be especially un-fun. He scooped up some honey from the jar and pulled Caleb’s head closer to the flickering candle light.

Honey made a fair dressing if you could find it. Fjord tended not to traipse about the countryside with a jar of it in his pack, so he’d only had cause to try this particular technique once before. Still, you didn’t make a living on a ship without learning how to patch up a grisly wound or two, and he’d had more’n one sailor tell him to give this method a shot.

Not that he planned to share that particular detail with Caleb.

“I didn’t think much of it until the next night,” Fjord continued. “I was out taking the air again when the little bastards jumped me.” He went quiet for a moment, unable to find the words. Blasé though he was trying to be for Caleb’s sake, it was not an easy memory to recount.

“There were five in all. Three with clubs, two with knives, all of ‘em with sturdy boots. I didn’t stand a chance, really.”  Fjord spread the honey in the cut as gently as he could.

Caleb gripped the meat of Fjord’s thigh with the hand he’d been holding in his lap. All the blood drained from his already frightfully pale face. He looked more ghoul than man.

“They knocked me down. Kicked the shit out of me.” Fjord scooped more honey from the pot, spread more of it in the wound. “I got up and tried to run, thinking I’d be safe in town. But they knew the streets better’n I did, and they caught me soon enough.”

Honey dressing applied, Fjord set the jar aside and wiped his hands on the bloodied linen. He then fished out a roll of thread and a small blade from the pack at his feet and set them both on the table for the moment.

“They got me up against a building. I fought ‘em, but I took a slash in the ribs, a stab in the chest. Collapsed one of my lungs, I think, but the memory’s fuzzy.”

Starting at the back of the cut, Fjord gathered a few strands of hair on either side of the wound and, as gently as he could, folded and twisted them tightly together. Then he measured and cut a short length of string and used that to tie the twisted strands of Caleb’s hair together. Caleb breathed out a heavy sigh when Fjord tied off the first suture, then stiffened as Fjord took up the second.

And Fjord kept talking.

“Then one of ‘em cut me across the belly. Didn’t feel like anything at first, just this deep wrongness, this—this opening up. Then the pain. Like someone was carving off my skin with hot steel. Fire, everywhere. It still wakes me up sometimes, the memory of that pain.”

Halfway through the twisted hair sutures now, Caleb could hardly hold still.

“Jester found me, I don’t know how long after. I was lyin’ in the dirt, close to a corpse already. I could _feel_ myself dying. Everything just getting… quiet. Further away. Even Jester’s screamin’ in my face was like a shout from the bottom of a well.”

 As Fjord was tying up the next suture, Caleb let out a shuddering groan. Fjord stopped and then, after considering for a moment, tipped Caleb’s chin up.

“I’m almost done,” Fjord said. “You gonna be okay for a couple more minutes?”

Caleb tried to nod into Fjord’s hand, but it was a weak, half-hearted gesture. His eyes were nearly closed with exhaustion, but even still, a flash of brilliant blue snuck through. “I’m tired,” Caleb breathed.

“I know.” Fjord slid his fingers along Caleb’s jaw until he found his pulse. It was weak and thready. Fjord was momentarily surprised by how sharp the bones of Caleb’s face felt, even with several days’ worth of stubble in the way.

“Hey, Caleb?”

Caleb grunted.

“If you’re gonna faint, you let me know first, okay?”

“Mm.”

“You wanna hear the rest of this story?” Fjord was beginning to think he’d picked the wrong one.

“ _Fjord._ ”

Or not.

Fjord cleared his throat. He moved right to the edge of the bed, about as close to Caleb as he could get without pulling Caleb into his lap, and got back to work twisting and tying off the makeshift sutures.

“Last thing I remember was Jester shoving my intestines back in my body. And a heat—this incredible heat like nothin’ I’d ever felt before—of her casting that spell, knittin’ my flesh back together.”

Caleb listed to the right, the righted himself with a start.

“I woke up two days later in nothin’ but a blanket with three new scars—one up here…,” Fjord touched the right side of his chest, “here…,” he moved lower, tracing a path along his rib cage, “…and a third from my right hip to the bottom of my left ribs, jagged and livid.” He drew a line across his belly.

Fjord tied off the final suture and examined his work. It wouldn’t be winning him awards, but it got the job done. He helped Caleb back into an upright position. “I’ll even show ya tomorrow if ya ask nice.” The smile that curled at the corner of Fjord’s mouth pulled at the scar splitting his upper lip. He hoped it looked more reassuring than it felt to him.

Caleb leaned back in the chair, eyes closed, and took a deep breath through his. A few beats later, eyes still closed, he said, “Is that the end of the story?”

No, that wasn’t the end.

Fjord wiped the back of his hand across his eyes. The intensity of his focus on fixing Caleb’s head had kept him for recognizing the exhaustion that had crept up on him, too.

“I go back to that feeling in my nightmares,” Fjord said. “Sometimes it hits me so hard I can’t breathe. I wake up thinking I’m choking on my own blood.”

Caleb blinked his eyes open. They were rimmed in red and bloodshot, the arresting blue of his irises two inky wells in the waning candle light. He reached out for Nott, letting his hand fall just within her reach. “Is that what happened on the road to Alfield?” He asked, sparing a slow glance at Fjord. “That nightmare?”

Fjord was quiet a while. He decided, in the end, not to answer the question. It would be better for the both of them if Caleb believed whatever he liked, and if Fjord wasn’t forced to lie.

“Me gettin’ hurt like that…,” Fjord started, then trailed off. He watched Nott breathe and thought of Jester. Gods strike him down if he ever scared her that badly again.

Fjord took a breath. “I’d only known her a few days, but it changed something between us. Not just that were closer, shared some fucked up experience neither of us could forget—though there was that. It was like, I don’t know—it opened a door. Invited pain in, if that makes sense.”

Breathy with pain, Caleb laughed. “Not really, no.”

Fjord planted his elbows back on his knees and rested his forehead in his hands. Caleb’s legs were still locked against his own, but he didn’t care to move them just then.

“Look.” Fjord sighed. “This thing you got with Nott—I mean, whatever it is, it’s none of my business—if you saw a manticore tear her in half and she was just some random goblin on the street, you might say, ‘Oh, that’s sad,’ but that’d be extent of it, right? ‘That’s sad, nothing I can do,’ and you’d move on with your life. But because it was _Nott_ , because that monster nearly ate your friend, you just about lost your mind.”

Fjord peeked at Caleb from between his fingers. Caleb’s gaze was trained on Nott, but he was listening.

“Now, maybe there was something else goin’ on there, with the burning priest and all that,” Fjord continued. “Like I said, not my business. But the look on your face… That was the first time you thought you might lose her. Really lose her. Wasn’t it?”

Fjord’s question hung in the air between them with only Caleb’s breaths for company. Beau’s barking laughter filtered up from the common room below. Whoever was drinking down there had to be well in their cups by now. Fjord was glad, for once, he wasn’t with them.

Then Caleb just… crumpled forward onto the bed. He buried his face in the crook of his arm, free hand still lying limp beside Nott, and began to sob—quietly at first, then messily, loudly, with no regard for propriety at all.

“Yeah.” Fjord watched the man’s narrow shoulders shake. “Yeah.”

He laid a light hand between Caleb’s shoulder blades. He didn’t move it at all, didn’t try to soothe Caleb like he might a child, just let the weight of his hand rest there, a silent reminder that he hadn’t left.

They stayed that way until Caleb’s sobs grew soft and infrequent. Fjord thought he’d fallen asleep, so he was surprised when shaky mumbling broke the quiet.

“What are we doing? What are we _doing?_ ” Caleb muttered the question to himself again and again, like a chant.

Fjord flexed the hand on Caleb’s back. He’d nearly fallen asleep himself. “You say somethin’?”

“Verfickter _Scheißdreck_.” Caleb spat the last word.

“Now, I don’t speak Zemnian, but I’m pretty sure that was rude.”

Caleb wiped his nose on his sleeve. “Fucking shit.”

“Sounded like ‘motherfucker’ to me. I was all ready to defend my honor.”

A long moment passed.

“That would have been funny,” Caleb said drowsily.

Fjord smiled. “Yeah, it would have.”

Silence, but for Nott’s even breathing. Then Caleb sat up with a grunt, and, swaying a bit, scooted the chair until it was right in front of Fjord. He folded his arms across Fjord’s lap and laid his head on it like a pillow.

“Next time,” Caleb whispered. “I’ll be funny next time.”

Fjord smoothed Caleb’s hair off his forehead. “All right,” he said. “You do that.”

Fjord woke the next morning with a stiff back and a blanket on his shoulders, his fingers curled in Caleb’s hair.


End file.
